Tundra_Man 

I competed in the Le Mars, IA sprint triathlon on Saturday. This was my 4th event this year (all sprint distances) and I was planning on it being my final event for the year (more on that later.)

After discovering in my last tri that oatmeal sits like a rock in my gut, I ate half a bagel with a little cream cheese and a bottle of Gatorade for breakfast. This was at about 7:15, and the first wave of the swim wasn’t going to start until 9 AM. After that I just sipped on water.

The forecast was for the weather to be 53 degrees and rainy. It was about 58 and overcast. It had rained during the night, but by morning the roads were mostly dry. The additional 5 degrees warmth was a welcome surprise as well.

I arrived and set up my transition area. The first thing I noticed was that they really had us jammed in fairly close. The guy next to me kept moving his stuff into my area and under my bike and I kept moving it back out. I finally decided I could get all uptight about it, or I could just deal with his stuff in my way. I chose to deal with it, and by the end of the morning had a new friend. Outside of this one small flaw, he turned out to be a pretty good guy.

The swim was a 300 yard snake swim in the local pool. The water was warmer than the air temp and felt pretty good. We were started every 30 seconds in order of estimated swim time, which was to reduce the amount of passing. In the pre-race meeting we were told that we were to abide by the standard passing procedure of tapping a person’s foot, whereas that person must immediately stop swimming and let the passer go around. As I started the last lap, I managed to catch the guy in front of me. I tapped his foot hard enough to be noticeable, but he kept swimming. So then I grabbed his ankle and gave it a good tug, and he continued to swim. So I had to be a jerk and just muscle my way past him and even then he didn’t get the hint. Anyway, I climbed out of the water at 5:25. I had estimated 5:45, so I was a little faster than I had hoped. I account the extra speed to adrenaline.

The first transition went without incident, and I was off on the 15 mile bike leg. This turned out to be much more hilly than I had anticipated. There basically were no flats along the whole course. I was either climbing or barreling down a hill. Earlier last week I had gone into my LBS and had their expert fitter tweak my setup. It’s amazing what a difference that made. I was able to stay aero for 99% of the whole ride, and average 19.15 mph which a Clydesdale like me has got to be happy with, especially considering the hills. I did have one incident on the third turn, where I thought I could barrel around it and maintain my speed. This might have worked had I accounted for the big pile of gravel in the intersection. I hit that and started to slide. I kept the bike upright, but went into the ditch which required me to unclip and carry my bike back out. Then I was in way too tall of a gear to get going very quickly, so I lost a little more time because of that. All in all, however, I was quite pleased with the bike leg as I didn’t get passed a single time (a first for me) and passed about eight riders myself.

The second transition wasn’t quite as smooth, mainly due to me first overshooting my rack space and having to run back and find it. Then I took off running and realized I still had my helmet on, so I had to run back again and take it off. But finally I was off on the 5k run successfully. This too was a fairly hilly course through a residential neighborhood. The people of Le Mars really were great, and many of the driveways were full of the residents sitting in lawn chairs and cheering us on. I’m not a strong runner by any means, and am happy if I can break the 10 minute mile mark. I was passed a few times, but also managed to pass a couple of other people and maintain a pace slightly faster than 9 minute miles. It probably helped that by the time I got to the run I really needed the restroom!

I finished with an overall time of 1:23:23. Not a world record by any means, but I shattered my own personal records in all three events, so I am ecstatic about my performance. I wound up placing 36th out of 117 in the individual competition. I even managed to beat all but 5 of the 18 three-person teams. My previous best time for the same length tri was around 1:30.

Le Mars is the “ice cream capital of the world” so it was only fitting that at the finish line they had a cooler full of ice cream treats for us to enjoy. It’s amazing what a fat guy like me will do for free ice cream!

All in all it was a great race. The event was very well organized and the community was wonderfully supportive. As I mentioned earlier, I had planned on this being my last event for this year but I had such a great time that I decided to enter one more on October 3rd. I set my personal performance bar rather high during this tri, so I have a lofty goal to shoot for in three weeks!

flip18436572

Great job. I was up at LeMars for the music festival and didn't see anything about a tri being done there. Dang it!!!

Maybe next year!!!